Rereads are marked with an asterisk, like so*.
The title poem is excellent. Blind re-envisions the myth of St. Oran, who rose from the grave and denied the existence of Heaven and Hell, into a kind of atheist messiah who preaches an ethic that lauds the feminine realms of love and the material world. The "Other Poems," though, do not excel in terms of poetic language and thematic depth.
The inspiration for Park Chan-Wook's 2016 film, The Handmaiden, Fingersmith weaves a tale of double-crosses and deceit, patriarchal repression and madness, lesbian longing and mommy issues. Despite a bloated middle section, Fingersmith is a page-turner. Although the complicated plot twists threaten to bog down the plot near the climax, the slow burn thrill of the opening act and the exciting escape and looming confrontation of the final third make Fingersmith difficult to put down. The protagonist, Susan Trinder, is a great character, who combines street smarts with an endearing innocence when it comes to her loved ones. Vivid description brings the Victorian locales to life. Waters' London, in particular, recalls the soot-stained labyrinths of Dickens' Bleak House. Finally, I must commend Waters for depicting a lesbian relationship where I can believe that the girls in question like each other. Susan and Maud, unlike most fictional lesbians, achieve the rare distinction of seeming to enjoy each other's company, instead of being caught in a hateful relation based on obsession and an alarming lack of boundaries. Kudos!
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Footprints in the Snow is a fun Victorian thriller-romance. It begins with the murder of the local lord's son and an incestuous one-sided love affair, and it only gets more dramatic from there. Russell is very readable for a Victorian writer, and she demonstrates fantastic skill to rack up the tension as the heroine and her would-be lover face a cavalcade of obstacles that stand between them and wedded bliss.
The sensation of finishing a Patricia McKillip novel is akin to waking from a dream. In The Cygnet and the Firebird, McKillip weaves a dream of dragons and deserts. I found it to be one of her better novels. Though her lyrical prose is confounding as ever, here it enhances the underlying story structure, instead of obscuring its non-existence. She explores themes of peace and war, trust and betrayal, playing with ideas that she will develop further in Alphabet of Thorn. The conclusion, however, is a tad deus ex draconis.
I was excited to read The Unicorn, Murdoch's lesbian gothic novel about a woman imprisoned within the ideology of redemptive suffering. However, by the end of it, I felt that I was the one finally escaping a seven year curse. The novel starts strong. The sensuous descriptions of the landscape compliment the moody atmosphere. However, the novel soon dissolves in a turgid mess, as the pathetic nature of the characters' wealth-induced ennui results in nonexistant stakes and little sympathy from the reader. In addition, the lesbian element is barely present. Instead, much of the novel is told from the perspective of pompous bloviator (and pseudo-courtly lover) Effingham.
Kadare recounts his childhood in an Albanian city during WWII. The young narrator is exposed to much violence, which he renders dreamlike through his insistence on personifying objects, including the stones that make up the city. He uses the environment to conjure a gloomy, claustrophobic mood. Kadare also pays close attention to the treatment of women, portraying the misogyny that animates the occupying armies and Albanian culture. Kadare has a great gift for language, and his prose is both poetic and readable.
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Highly recommended. Heim uses Rene Girard's work as springboard for this astounding interpretation of Bible, which emphasizes the anti-sacrificial message at the heart of the text. He makes sense of things that have always bothered me about the Bible, such as the Judas problem: Why is Judas wrong if Christ came to Earth to die? Wasn't his betrayal merely fulfilling God's, and therefore Christ's, plan? Heim argues that the story of Christ's death is like a first century The Crucible. It dramatizes the scapegoating of an innocent victim to reveal the truth that underlies human sacrifice---a capstone to the anti-sacrifical ideas that run through the Hebrew Bible. I recommend reading Proverbs of Ashes first to understand the arguments that Heim is responding to.
Mencius collects Mencius's discussions and debates with various dignataries about the importance of benevolence and rightness to life. Much of its content is rendered esoteric to me due to my lack of knowledge about ancient Chinese history. However, Mencius's main points are clear: humans are fundamentally good, the rites and hierarchies must be kept for society to flourish, care for one's elderly parents is essential, and a good ruler works for the good of the people.
Written for a series about the future of society, Dora Russell defends various feminist causes, including birth control and free love, against anti-feminist critics. Russell's tone alternates between arch wit and strident earnesty. She emphasizes the importance of scientific knowledge in aiding women to make the best decisions for themselves.
In this essay, Seneca argues that men find life short because they do not spend it well. He urges the reader to value the present. He then rejects various ways of spending one's time (e.g., working, writing music, hosting dinner parties, etc.). He argues that most of us do not live, but rather preoccupy ourselves as to avoid the spectre of death. He then, unsuprisingly, concludes that reading philosophy is the best way to spend one's times because then your best buddy is Socrates himself :)
The essay contains a lot of humour as Seneca ridicules musicians (always snapping their fingers) and the sort of people who today run Star Trek wikipedias. I was struck by the idea that the one thing we possess that is beyond material destruction is our memories. I thought about how much solace I take in certain memories. So, we should live well in order to have comfortable memories. Another argument that stuck with me is that procrastination exchanges the present for the spectral future.
The initial binary Heschel establishes between space and time is intriguing, but is not well-developed. Heidegger's idea that humans are time would be an interesting complement to Heschel's thought. In addition, the spiritual world Heschel imagines is both anti-material and exclusively male, which I find repulsive.